Changing from a 30pin connector to a 8 pin connector, Apple claims that a smaller and shorter connector will improve design with the iPhone 5, making it thinner and allowing it to accomodate more hardware within the same chassis. However, is it really the case?
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| iPhone 5’s lighting cable interface |
The new cable, known as the lightning cable, is just a new cash cow for Apple. Back in 2009, EU decided to help consumers by standardizing all mobile phones’ data/power connectors to make use of the microUSB standard. Soon in 2010 and later, every single brand of mobile phone started adopting the microUSB interface. All Android and Windows Phone today has a microUSB port for charging and data transfer. Apple then tries to be funny and decided to stick to their own design of connector. In order to continue sales in the EU market, they came out with converters, changing their proprietary connector to connect to microUSB. Why can’t they just adopt the interface?
Money. What else? With their proprietary technology, anyone who wants to sell a iPhone cable will need to pay a little sum to Apple. Apple saw a problem with the cable from iPhone3G/3GS/4/4S as they can be copied too easily. China manufacturers are selling knockoff cables which works at just a few cents. The answer to that? A new cable. Lightning cable actually features a never seen before technology, incorporating a mysterious chip that authenticates the cable as genuine apple. Without that chip, the phone simply won’t charge. 3rd party cable manufacturers can’t get their hands on these chip, killing off competition in the cable accessories market. It’s a clever business plan, but honestly speaking, the consumers are the ones who suffers the most. The monopoly also means that consumers don’t have an alternative choice if prices were increased. They are trapped by Apple to buy Apple products.
“Why should I pay so much for just a simple cable which works exactly like any other microUSB cable out there?”
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| Mysterious chip |
Although it’s much more difficult for Chinese manufacturers to create “knock-off” cables now, I’m quite sure that they have already been working on “hacking the cable”. Join the movement. Support R&D in knock-off cables.
